Edit - OK, the survey is now closed. Thanks again to those who participated, despite the difficulties.

Just a reminder: if you're not attending the WWDC keynote today, Macworld's Jason Snell and Dan Moren will be providing live coverage here. The keynote begins at 10:00 AM PDT.

We've posted a new poll asking how many monitors you use with your most-used Mac.

I know many of you have more than one Mac, but one of them is probably your most-used machine -- and it's the number of displays connected to that machine that we're curious about. We last ran a poll like this in 2002, and it will be interesting to see if the percentage of multi-monitor users has gone down or up since then (I believe about 34% had more than one display in 2002).

Today marks the beginning of the transition of macosxhints.com to a new (well, sort of new, as you'll see) editor. Macworld has hired Craig Arko (his ID here is crarko) as my replacement, and while he may be new to you, he's not new to me. Craig helped launch the Mac OS X Hints forum site way back in early 2002. He's been there ever since, helping keep the forum site one of the most useful destinations for those in need of help with OS X and related programs.

I'm thrilled that Craig is coming on board to manage hints; it's great having a familiar (to me), well known and knowledgeable replacement. For the next week or two, I'll be training Craig, so you'll see both 'robg adds' and 'crarko adds' on the editor's notes.

Soon, though, Craig will officially take the mantle of Mac OS X Hints editor in chief, and I'll become a regular hints contributor like the rest of you. I've had an amazing time with the site, and I'm confident that it will continue to thrive under Craig's oversight. Welcome aboard, Craig!

[crarko adds: Greetings, all! It will be a great honor to continue the tradition of Mac OSX Hints!]

I posted a new two-part poll this morning, asking about your usage of Spaces and Exposé. In nearly 10 years, I don't think we've ever asked about these two features, and I know many people rely on them...so now we'll get a sense for how often people use both.

Note that this is a two-question poll; answer the first question, and you'll be taken to the next.

For those who purchased an iPad over the weekend, there's a new poll asking you to grade your device from total failure to total perfection. After having the thing in your hands for 48 hours, how would you grade it?

Two poll updates today. First, I've posted a new poll about the mix of Macs you're presently using -- Intel (via Apple), Intel (via build-it-yourself), PowerPC, or some mix of the above. I'm curious to see not only the mix of Intel and PowerPC, but how many are using self-built Intel powered Macs.

The second poll update is that the iPad interest poll has now closed, with just over 10,000 votes. Of those who voted, nearly 44% are planning on buying iPad 1.0 when it comes out in April, with a virtual tie (two votes' difference) between then cheapest and the most expensive versions for the most-popular spot (11.3% each). In total, Mac OS X Hints readers will be buying at least (as the poll didn't allow for more than one purchase) $2.92 million worth of iPads!

An additional 29% claim they'll buy the second generation iPad -- add that to those buying the first generation, and you've got about 73% of the respondents owning an iPad. I'll admit this is a much higher figure than I was expecting, and seems to indicate (at least among the Hints readership) that the iPad has a bright future.

Pardon me for paraphrasing Douglas Adams, but it seemed a most fitting way to begin this announcement.

Over 13,250 hints, written with something in excess of three million words. The internet's smartest and friendliest community of OS X users. An incredibly helpful forum site renowned for its civility and useful answers. A career change. Uncountable articles for Macworld magazine and macworld.com. Two books. Two Geek Cruises. A couple of iWork video training projects. Handfuls of Macworld Expo presentations. Hundreds of people I consider friends (not "Facebook friends," but friends in the truest sense), even though I've only ever met a handful of them in person. Nearly ... ten ... years!

I expected none of the above when I launched macosxhints.com back in November of 2000. At the time, I'd been married for a little over a year, we had no children, and my day job was running the office for a small trade show company in Portland. I was just looking for something to do on the side that might help me learn about OS X. (And wow, my little hobby certainly did that!)

But thanks to some hard work on my part, and to some incredibly good luck -- in timing, in picking the right content management system, in Apple's resurgence -- I was able to experience all of the above for nearly 10 full years.

But now, the time has come for me to move on. As of today, I've begun the process of vacating my well-worn macosxhints.com editor's chair, and departing Macworld for a new adventure (more on that in a bit). Don't worry, though -- the macosxhints.com site isn't going anywhere. Macworld is hard at work on finding my successor, and I'll continue to be involved with the site, running it until that person is onboard and fully trained.

Before I go, though, some thanks are in order...

In an attempt to block the flood of spammy comments, I've now enabled comment moderation (and, hooray, disabled the annoying comment captcha). This means I'll need to review your comments, though thanks to the way the system works, only your first comment will have to be manually approved (I hope).

You'll see a message to this effect when you submit a comment; I'll do my best to get to the queue multiple times per hour for today, just to see how it goes.

I know this isn't ideal, but it seems better than the broken captcha system that resets the captcha characters every time you preview.

Update: If you've published a comment in the last 18 months, you're now auto-approved, so you won't see a captcha, and your comment won't be moderated. This means it should be easier for you (instant comments!) and me (I'll only have to review new commenters' first submissions).

-rob.

So, after all the hype, will you be buying an iPad? Share your buying plans in our new poll, and we'll get a quick unscientific back-of-the-envelope feel for the iPad's popularity amongst Mac OS X Hints readers.

Comments in the poll's thread, please. (Me? I voted 'waiting for the next generation,' as I'd want one capable of doing video chats.)

-rob.